


apostrophe

by soaps



Category: Free!
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, Dissociation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Finale, self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 13:23:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12212115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaps/pseuds/soaps
Summary: Sousuke said he checked under the bed but it didn't leave a trail. It might as well have flown away. Something about the wound was not right. The texture was not of flesh. Rin poked at it and it fell apart between his fingers. Kleenexes. Sousuke says that was his doing. The emptiness had been irritating.There’s no use in putting a heart where it doesn't want to be, he said. But my shoulder is feeling better already.After the relay Sousuke's heart goes missing and Rin does everything in his power to find it.





	apostrophe

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% self indulgent but it's 10 years later I still really like Rin's character and his illustration of depression&anxiety (aka The Dynamic Duo) and I kinda wondered about the resolution that that? Posted from my phone bc I'm a gremlin. Also I feel petty saying this but maybe if I do I won't have to see it happen! pls don't hate read something I put real life time and effort into and then be a butt about it. Especially on a platform where I'll probably see it. Thanks.
> 
> The pacing is supper jarring, probably more so than I meant it to be, so the narrative gets a little confusing. There is a brief mention of csa if you squint so please be careful and also mind the other tags. Read safe <3

 

In his body feeling like pebbles, shards and chips of slate and other things he forgot. Rin sits up. Dust rolls off. Dirt. It is in his nose and mouth. His mouth is dry and filled up with his tongue and pieces of old roots. A turned over pot of last year's flowers - has it been so long? I am awake, he says, covered in grit. I am awake again.

Sousuke tells him about his old team so that Rin can replicate the drills. Sousuke has a lanyard with a school ID and two keys and he wraps the cord around his hand again and again. They walk to the shore and catch little fish with their hands in the pools when the tide goes out. Sousuke calls them silverfish because that is what they look like. Sousuke lets water slip from between his fingers until the fish he caught is twitching and straining and wet like a tongue.  _ Look at that, _ Sousuke says, holding it out to see. It is suffocating because it does not know how to breathe air yet. He doesn't even have eyelids to blink with.  _ Look at that. _

In a pet store Rin remembers how Sousuke had been in a car accident once and bled into his belly. He was young at the time, maybe too young to recall, but the scars from the operation on his dark skin glow like chalk lines and his mother never let him in the car with his father again. Rin hadn't thought of this when he earlier saw him undressed but he is remembering it now as not even Sousuke remembers it. Rin could live in Sousuke's body, could exist as he has existed, helium head passing up and through walls. Rin is filled up with empathy. The little orange-beaked finches make a loud sound together. They threaten a stomach ache. Eyes mean, body parts removed - Had Rin not seen it happen? - Sousuke turns away and the warmth of burning was something Rin only imagined, frantic wings like crinkled papers and a bell over the door that makes Rin start every time.

Rin’s father had a sister and he also had a brother. His sister usually lived up north. She moved house often since all five of her children were grown and tending children of their own. She was born long before her brothers and her children were born long before Rin, and Rin hadn’t seen them often enough to be able to attach names to their aging faces. This is why there is a great imbalance. Rin’s cousins can remember him from the early times of his life and may say: Do you remember the time we went fishing and you stuck a hook through your thumb? or, Remember the farm where you held the chicks in your hands?

His youth lead to an evaporation of events as they passed into his small body and slipped right out again, and he had nothing to say.

But Sousuke is miserable. He said this or Rin could tell. He’d earned this telepathy. Sousuke had such power over Rin when they were children because Rin wanted to play with him much more than he wanted to play with Rin. Sousuke split his time evenly between looking Sousuke exhaled wetly against his throat, under Rin, shivering. Heat over blacktop. Their thread shrugs over itself like breathed on water. Sousuke asks what it is that they are doing. He'd asked this before and Rin had brushed it away.

He is alien even to Rin.  When he was young Rin went fishing and wondered what the earthworms speared on his hooks were thinking while they were still wriggling. Rin circles him out of morbid curiosity and still Rin is worse than him, ugly like melted fruit, because he is smug over what he keeps to his breast quiet and unsaid. He’s too mean to say even if he is bursting with it. He pretends that their tables have turned.

Footsteps pattered slowly in the hall. Sousuke’s mouth was pliant under Rin’s hand. He murmured a warning. The feet passed. Rin stood, his own pillow under Sousuke’s head, and pulls another down from the bed above and settled back near the other. He must be disappointed. Sousuke seems much older than his age. Sousuke wants Rin but is too one-sided to say why that is. He curled towards Rin like a flower to light. He was close to Rin and they were still touching through the spaces. This happened a hundred times already. One or both of them was pretending to sleep but it wasn’t believable.

Gou was leaning over the display with an aluminum watering can. She hummed just loud enough for Rin to hear. Dusk had passed over and it leaked through the cracks around the windows and pricked hair on his arm. Her friend’s mother owned the flower shop and Gou was always available to close up. That was the way she put it. “Rin,” she said, “will you help me close up?” And Rin was thinking about all of the things a person could close the whole way over: doors and drawers and books and tabs and eyes and windows and crossings and hands and and and the radio is saying,  _ But darling most of all, I love how you love me. _

The lights in the refrigerator flickered. There were flowers in pots along the center aisle and they were dying. Rin put them in a garbage bag.

 

Rin’s mother had many boyfriends when Rin was young and one of them lived with them when Rin made the decision to go to Australia. Things turned up broken, thing like crystal from the parents’ wedding and a vase from the grandmother, and in the evenings when Rin’s mother was away he would drink. The dark was terrifying with all of the squeaky floorboards. Closing, Rin thought, and he knotted the top of that ugly bag. Sometimes people make the decisions for you.

Rin could have guessed that he'd imagined it and he walked to the door slowly. There came a second knock half a minute later, more urgent. He was in a hotel room, Samezuka boys in every room down the hall. He swung open the door. Sousuke was clenching his hands, a little sweat on his temples. Rin's neighbor had a heart attack once, collapsed right in his front yard. Rin saw it happen. The man didn't die though. Sousuke's hair was freshly cut, face recently shaved - something he had to do almost every day now because of how his hair grew, but something he sometimes neglected. He held a bundle of flowers, no paper or string binding them.

Camellia? Haven’t you got a key? What is this about?

Sousuke held out his flowers and said,  _ Good luck. _

Thanks. Rin took them, held them. The stems shifted around. What happened to your key?

_ I left it with you. _

Oh, I guess you did. Where did you get these? They’re nice, Rin said. He laughed. What?

Sousuke sat on the bed, examined the carpet and breathed slowly.  _ Nothing. _

Don't do this again.

He laid the flowers down and sat on the dresser facing Sousuke. They fell everywhere. What kind of gift makes such a mess? The light was not on and so they could only see by what came in through the curtains. It was sleepy. Too much was happening. Sousuke was rigid looking, stiff like the legs of a dead bug. Rin didn’t ask and Sousuke was looking at him like he wanted to say  _ I love you _ . Rin knew he was being mean. Someone was picking apples from a tree not ready to bear, and dim, Rin would not pick them at all.

It is terrifying to find his shadow going off in a different direction even if he spent years not looking at it. Rin didn’t feel like a winner at all. Rin didn’t know how he felt. Rin felt stupid. He felt lonely.

  
  


If you’d asked me, Rin said, I’d have begged you to do differently.

_ That’s why I didn’t. _

Why would you do something like that?

Sousuke sat back. His face was sharp and severe like his mother’s and Rin’s gut hurt thinking about how he knew to compare, and how he knew things about Sousuke without even thinking about knowing them. It was maddening how unaffected Sousuke could be.

_ Oh, I don’t know, _ Sousuke said. _ That’s how it is. You and me - we need to be together, I think. I suppose things will be different now. Whatever consequence, it is what it is. _

.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
On Sunday Rin got a call that the preparations had been made and there was bed for him. The man that helped him was excited. Rin had done this kind of moving before yet he still expected elation. Now the expectation of excitement felt stupid and embarrassing. Nothing sat right against him. There were cobwebs in the hall over the ceiling where the attic folds out into a wound to prop a ladder against. Rin was too short to knock them away. The kitchen was cleaner because it was farther away from the room he never goes in. He was there to visit his mother who was at work. Rin was so bored on the phone with that man that he began to sort through the cupboard for something to reach through the phone with to poke him right in his droning mouth.

He thought Rin was shocked silent because he had only been happy with him for each contact they'd shared so far. Opportunities were cropping up. This was what Rin wanted.

Somewhere else he is sitting next to Sousuke and Momo and Ai and Kazuki and everyone, seated around six boxes of pizza and red and white checkered paper. Sousuke knocked his knee into Rin's, keeping time. He was winding the white paper from his straw around his finger. He was wearing blue.

Momo was telling Rin that he and Sousuke were being too quiet, and along the line of the table the people were laughing about something but Rin didn’t hear.

_ We won’t be coming here again,  _ Sousuke said to Nitori outside, standing under the awning for protection from the weather.  _ There were a lot of flies in there. _ The street was wet from rain and when Rin stepped forward the water followed his feet. They'd all splintered off in different directions, going home for the long weekend. Nitori said goodbye to Rin and Rin took hold of Sousuke's elbow once they were alone. Rin said that he was staying with Sousuke and Sousuke said he could not remember inviting him. He was joking.

Wet weather made him tired and it also made his hair curl a little and Rin noticed he needed a trim again. He dozed in the seat next to Rin, his knee knocking into Rin's occasionally and Rin wondered how Sousuke noticed the flies when he did not.

After dusk, he was allowed to sit at Sousuke's side breathing liquor as Sousuke rested cherry-mouthed and gave his pits to Rin in charity - spat them right into his palm. Rin fit his arm around the broad width of his chest somehow. It was dark in the bedroom and the rain streaked the glass in daunting rivulets. Rin matched their breathing. Sousuke took Rin’s hand to hold under his ribs over the flat scar.  _ Feel that? _ he asked.  _ There is a song that goes exactly like this. _

Rin felt tearing, ripped in half. He held the door frame. Camera flashes. Rin felt something in his palm, wet and sweet, but when he looked it was empty and Sousuke was asleep.

 

  
  
  


~  
  


-

 

Sousuke saw a doctor and booked an operation two weeks out. Rin found that strange because he’d watched enough television to think reaction should be immediate with quick intervention and nurses with hair that spilled out of their caps in careful curls. The nurse that Rin spoke with on the first day was gawky and Sousuke’s doctor was middle-aged and fat. Rin didn't hold his hand but did his wrist and the whole ordeal was a letdown.

After that everything tried to move on as usual. In their dorm room Sousuke could tell him about what will happen.  _ It won’t scar as bad as you’d think, _ he told Rin even though neither cared if it did or not. He and Momo had been watching videos of the procedure on the internet. Rin thought those videos were disgusting at first but after a few minutes they bored him because the gore wasn't as horrific as he'd assume it to be. Rin had seen better in movies.

Under Sousuke’s eyes was dark and puffy like he hadn’t slept even though he had. Sometimes he slept and did not wake unless Rin prodded him and then Sousuke was a pain for hours. Rin wanted him up and around. Rin had to tell him something but as soon as he opened his eyes he forgot what it was.  _ This is better, _ Sousuke said. Rin knew how to be empathetic and so he tried, and when he was upset he pretended not to be.

The season was over but the school year was not. Rin stayed up most nights studying. Sousuke didn’t study anymore and he didn’t read by lamplight. They were moving in two different directions now.

Sousuke was folded up and Rin tugged out the edges of the sheets because even though the air was dry Rin expected that he needed room to breathe. His stomach was hurting. It was strange how small he looked. Rin touched his wrist and it was cold. Sousuke’s eyelids were blue and so were his lips. There were red and black spots dripping out into the open.

_ Stop,  _ he said.  _ Don't yell. _ His gown was dark and slick laid over him and Rin pulled it away. His shoulder was bandaged and on the other side his chest was gaping.  _ I woke up like this this morning. _

Rin moaned and stared and hoped for his knees knocking against his bedside. Sousuke said he checked under the bed but it didn't leave a trail. It might as well have flown away. Something about the wound was not right. The texture was not of flesh. Rin poked at it and it fell apart between his fingers. Kleenexes. Sousuke says that was his doing. The emptiness had been irritating.

_ There’s no use in putting a heart where it doesn't want to be,  _ he said.  _ But my shoulder is feeling better already. _

 

Sousuke watched Rin with a smouldering expression of concern, leaning closer to where Rin laid across his bunk, his body rattling like a pebble caught in a vacuum cleaner. Sousuke blinked his eyes - two slices of beet on his hollow face, and he asked,  _ Rin, are you alright? _ There was a shotgun blast in his chest and it was leaking the fluid at the bottom of the garbage can and Sousuke was looking at Rin like he was the one that should be worried.

_ Here,  _ Sousuke unfolded a blanket and covered him with it. Rin nearly cried out over this, indignant that he should be covered up, but it was something Rin himself would have done to someone else and the realization had him seeping deeper into the mattress and its cover. The door clicked as Sousuke left.

  
  


In a memory he is screaming that he does not want to be touched.  _ If you don't wear your seatbelt, _ his mother is saying,  _ you'll fly right through that windshield.  _ His skin rips off like wet paper. Tumbling through the water he can't tell which way is up and which is down and he can't follow the whirring of the air leaving his own breath because it's tangled and makes no sense. Don't leave me alone, the glass hangs in the air. When he thinks he wakes up the dogs are howling. His face is numb. This is forever. Rin wants desperately for it to be gone but can't be sure where he is. He would give anything for these feelings to stop. He squeezes his eyes tight. The dogs keep on barking. The next time he opens his eyes it is light in his room but he feels mostly the same.

Rin’s feet hang over the edge of the pier and cold blood sinks into them so that they feel like stones.

The tide laps at the pier and Rin thinks about Sousuke there, in the water and out of his clothes. The skin across his shoulders where he tans the darkest is the color of paper when it first begins to burn. Rin’s thinks that if the sun comes out again he will hold open his mouth until what he needs has a chance to grow from it. That would be something.

_ It would, _ Sousuke agrees.

Rin laughs and Sousuke laughs and he almost had him, but then Rin is sobbing, You're not really dead, are you? Not really really. Other people see you, Nitori still takes your laundry for you and brings it back. I'm sorry. You spoke with our English teacher and he responded to you directly, I saw it. You can't be all the way dead. Is that worse? I am so sorry. So sorry.

_ Rin, what are you saying? Slow down, I can't understand you. _

And his mother is rocking him in her arms, “Hush, baby, there's no reason to be upset. I love you. I love you.”

_ I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone else. _

“Close your eyes and when you open them everything will be better than it is now, won't you try it with me?”

_ Don't cry, Rin, _ Sousuke wipes away tears from his closed eyes.  _ Shhh, shhh, it's okay. Everything is going to be okay.  _ And he is holding him to his chest and this is more tenderness than Rin has ever felt, or ever knew existed, and a trill of fear electrifies him and he cries harder.

  
-   
  
-   
  


-

  
  


-

  
  
  
  


  
  


  
  


The dog’s eyes are two black spaces, like the aging bruise of a fruit, and Sousuke reflects it in his chest, in the wound that gapes.  _ My love for you is baby's breath, dried out and kept at the back of your closet, I will never forgive you for it. _

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


  
  
  
Rin remembered his mother telling him that the first star he saw in the sky every night was the twinkling eye of someone far away that loved him and that he should wish on them. He is okay. This is where his heart is. 

 

  
  
  
  
-   
  
A comb worked through the bind of a tangle, chlorine tight, the lacey frond of a fern unfurling. In the dark, cursing, saying,  _ There is so much in you. There is so much in you that you are going blind from the light of it. You are reaching through the bars of the bunk and your fingers are twisting up under the moonlight like a spider in bleach. I am going to catch an infection, this open wound, thanks for nothing… _

  
Rin makes the light come through his fingers in a dozen different shades, like an x-ray that shows all of the worms underneath and what no one has ever admitted before is that sunlight that is not yellow sticks around and burns like an acid.

Rin swims laps at dinner time. He measures his breath, moves seamlessly, one eye on the clock. His mother always told him to never swim alone. Even after he started winning awards she fussed and Rin was terribly indignant - because why would he ever want to swim alone in the first place? Sometimes thinking about swimming makes him think about drowning. That makes him think about his father. He measures himself again pretends to be a robot.

  
  
  
Haruka sips his tea. He told Rin that he wasn't hungry and that is fine because Rin isn't eating either.

“My father sent me a postcard from Manila, and 100 pesos.” Haruka hands Rin the card and the money. Rin examines it, far away. It is very green and blue.

“You sent me a similar card when you first went to Australia. Do you recall?”

I suppose I do.

Haruka looks out the window. It has rained nearly every day since Autumn began. Puddles in the road reflect on glass and blur the curb. Spoons clink against bowls. Everyone shuffles and moves too fluidly. Rin’s heart beats like a bird's. The hair on Haru’s head is needle thin but plentiful. You can see his scalp in places when it is wet.

“Will you do that again?”

What?

“You don't plan on disappearing, do you?”

Rin can't even think. No. Who would plan something like that?

“Is something the matter?”

How can you ask me these things? You know of Sousuke.

“I know all about that, yes.”

Rin could strangle him.

“He asked me to speak with you. He is worried for you. He says you apprehensive about graduation and moving. I am apprehensive too.”

This is the same as what the councilor said, that the end of the fourth year can be very stressful for even the most well equipped students. Rin is fractured all over and still twitching. He didn't mention Sousuke to her even though he knew that she had seen him - his leaky chest wound obvious under his school uniform. Nothing is right, the ache is everywhere, itchy like bugs between teeth and in his hair. Nothing is where it should be. Rin cannot stop until he makes this right. But Sousuke-

Rin jerks upright. Haruka stares at him. The whites of his eyes stand out like crescent moons. What would you do if you lost something and could not find it?

Haru stares at him for what seems like forever. Girls walk under umbrellas on the other side of the window. They have long hair and long coats.  “I don't lose things,” he says, and he picks up his tea cup and drinks from it.

  
  
_ What does it say about you that the object of your desire is also the object of your disgust? Scrub your rash with a hard bristled brush and maybe it will go away. This is how it is supposed to be, whatever the consequence. _

Rin puts a spoon in the microwave in the dormitory kitchen and watches it spark until it catches fire. A boy coming in for something from the fridge beats the fire out, and sweating and exasperated he yells, “What the hell is wrong with you, you idiot!” And other boys rush into the kitchen and Rin does not know what to say because there are no metal utensils in the dormitory kitchen, only plastic. He has no idea where he got the spoon.

He is reprimanded and made to clean classrooms at the end of the day for a week. His advisor had said, “This was only an accident. I won't let your last year be ruined by something so stupid.” The truth is he goes easy because Rin is a good athlete.

Rin wipes down the blackboard. He is very tired suddenly and he can hardly stand. He lifts up a loose floor tile, and then two more. He busts one and pushes away the shards. There is soft dirt underneath, cool and moist as summer is leaving it. He burrows into it with his whole body, like a beetle would with all six of his legs. Rin was wrong, he is not awake. He misjudged himself. He is no better - never was. This is how he will exist forever. He pulls the dirt over himself like a blanket. He is not even crying this time. Is this what he'd gotten the spoon for? Digging forces soil under his nails until they begin to separate from their beds and it hurts. It makes him even more tired.

Sousuke is standing over him.  _ What the hell is wrong with you, you idiot! _

They have kissed before, haven't they? Sousuke is his dearest friend. Sousuke takes the broom from the door and brushes dirt away, exhuming Rin’s body like an artifact.

_ Can't you see me? _ Sousuke begs.  _ See me here, _ he says on his knees.  _ There is so much for you to do - for the both of us. I'll die completely. Get up. Hurry now. Brush the roots from your eyes. Do you see that you have reduced me to this? _

You are haunting me, Rin moans.

_ I am not dead _ ,  _ Rin! How do you expect to go on believing such things? When will you screw your head on? I am right here! Here as I have always been! Look at me. Look. _

And still you are haunting me. Why? Why?

_ You know damn well why! _ Sousuke raises up and throws down the broom and the grass loosens and blows off in the wind, made to follow Rin like a specter and put out fires, dripping from his bruises like bad fruit.

Please don't die, please don't die, please don't…

Sousuke is washing the blackboard with water. Rin is sprawled across a desk. Sousuke is in his uniform and the flashes of his face behind the bend of his extended arm shows he is unsettled. Rin is crying hard heavy tears. His face is on the desk. He does not know why he is crying and he cannot stop, and the sound of his own anguish is so terrible that he cries even more.

_ I'm sorry,  _ Sousuke says.  _ I don't know what to do. Stay here. Close your eyes and I will come back. _

  
  
  
  
  
  


T

 

         /      -

  
  
Taking the sadness from him, a needle, a straw and a tongue over a wet place. Rin was tackling him into the pool, and into the bathtub, and the water was splashing up like cooking oil around cold cuts of meat, and Rin couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. There were snakes hiding under the back porch and Sousuke’s chest was full of their old skins like a scrapbook of those summers. He was soaking wet and his clothes slipped right off him, a mouth full of porcelain, a chipped tooth that bleeds.

Come back. Come back. I’m ready now. Don’t leave me.

And the reply was the sound of things that are not yet food slapping down on the cutting board, fish that still have their heads, water from pipes that run slow from a clog, too much rice in the cooker, chlorine stuck to your teeth, breaking flower pots that are full of dirt but no flowers. Rin is inexperienced in this and so many other things and he’s floundering for a clue, feeling like Goldilocks - not too much care and attention please, but not too little either, or else he’ll start eating chicken bones on purpose. Rin has never read a story that wasn’t about himself.

The car swerves and the seat belt snaps. Rin has never known how to drive. The network of breaks in the glass folds the windshield impossibly, like old lace curtains that Rin falls through off the road and down the hill. His belly has burst inside. His limbs twist as he spins down collecting twigs and leaves in his hair. He comes to a hard stop, face half in mud. He sits back and stares into the creek that separates the Yamazaki and Matsuoka properties, breath slipping out. It is swollen with the Autumn's rain and sits perfectly still because it has nowhere to go. Rin is in pain. He curls up like a dog. Dark covers him like cement. He begins to drift. His thoughts swirl off in tendrils or shear off at the base. He only wants to rest, he starts to go numb. There isn't finality like he'd hoped. He isn't crying.

He has nearly died when he hears it - the soft pitter patter of bunny feet, wings fluttering, a heart humming a tune. Eyes snap open, crystal white. Rin inhales. The sound grows. It ignites something and Rin is raising up on broken haunches, turning his head both ways. It's drowned, Rin realizes, he puts out his hands - in front of himself like a sleepwalker, not above - and he falls in. The creek isn't freezing like the air is and there is no shock. He lists downwards, and the dog is nipping at his toes as he slips away and it is barking. Fireflies surround him in the water in a thousand pinpoints and Rin navigates by their constellations. He sinks ever further. When he thinks he is nearing the bottom it jumps away from him again. His hair floats around his face like lace.

He spots it from the shining corner of his eye -  a loose bundle of white and blue, smeared with dark. He reaches for it the same moment he hears it, and it is thudding like a drum beat. He folds back the blanket. It is the blanket from his childhood bed covered in blue and yellow stars and his broken guts twist at the memories, smeared now with dirt, with rich clay where water flows. The blanket pulls away and there are pesos, a book, an old ballpoint pen, a left shoe, a television remote, a yellow hair ribbon, a spoon, and a heart tapping a tune on the clay creek bed. Spooked, the treasures start off in different directions and for the first time Rin is scared. He tries to grab each but runs out of hands and lets them go because he only needs one thing, and he holds the heart like a small animal to his chest, thump thump thumping, warm and comforting and Rin is full of love - isn't he? He feels it everywhere. He can never be alone. His heart is as full as this one, only now he can't tell up from down and is suspended, twisting, not floating in one way or the other. Oh, Rin thinks. I guess I will take a quick nap but when I wake up things really will be different, and his eyes shut and he feels at peace, lulled by the heartbeats.

_ Rin. _

Loving hands catch his wrist a thousand miles away. Arms hold him around the shoulders. I'm ready, Rin says in the dark, and nothing can hurt me.

_ Rin. _

_ Rin. _

_ God, Rin, wake up! _

When air is forced into him the water is forced out and Rin coughs and vomits. The physical sensation is so terrible that he can't see for a few moments but when his eyes open he is being held by Sousuke, caged by his arms in the mud. Sousuke’s eyes are full of sparkling white. Carrot flowers! Goldenrod and cosmos, dots and impressions from the top of a ferris wheel. Ice cream fingers. Rin used to be young and he has that feeling now.

_ You were drowning,  _ Sousuke sobs.

I think for a moment I forgot how to swim but I appear to be fine now.

Sousuke is crying like Rin has never seen someone cry before, not even at a funeral. Fear will always be worse than sadness.

I found this for you, Rin says, and he holds out the heart to seal Sousuke's gaping chest. Rin finally understands it: the only way to be whole is to accept the bruised parts of yourself, however tender. They will be able to swim together now. Rin wants to tell him about the fireflies and how they can go looking for the bottom together but his chest hurts too much for that right now. Rin is draped in a blanket with blue and yellow stars.

Sousuke takes the clod of dirt from Rin’s hands. The mud is still and full of pebbles and shards of slate and old roots. It begins to fall apart in his hands. It melts from the water and becomes smaller, slipping away, and Sousuke has never been as terrified as he throws it aside and pulls Rin’s wet body to his chest. He rocks with him, too scared to know what to do. He will call for his mother, mothers always know what is right. Right now he is too scared to raise his voice because Rin is not how he should be.

_ I'm so sorry, _ is all Sousuke can manage. He wants to believe that this is something that could be loved away if the love was true enough.  _ I won't let you get away from me again. I shouldn't have left. I'll take better care of you. I love you. I love you. I'm sorry. Rin, Rin, Rin. _

And comforted, Rin’s eyes shut again like the lid over a tomb. Sometimes it is satisfying to be so tired because then you know you will sleep well for sure.

  
  
  


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°        z.   ^      

                                       °§            w

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Rin's mother is holding Sousuke, petting his hair and cooing like a bird. She might be crying too. His sister is there and she is missing the ribbon in her hair and she has gnawed her fingernails down to slivers. Rin hears this but doesn't see it because his eyes are still closed and he is sleeping.

  
  
  
  
And the radio is singing, muffled by a garbage bag:

_ I love how your heart beats whenever I hold you _

_ I love how you think of me without being told to _ __  
_ I love the way your touch is always heavenly _ _  
_ __ But, darling, most of all I love how you love me

  
  
  
It is morning by now. The walls are whitened by the daylight.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Twitterpated?   
  
Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: you're walking along, minding your own business. You're looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden, you run smack into a pretty face. Woo-woo! You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head's in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather; and before you know it, you're walking on air. And then you know what? You're knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head!   
  
Gosh. That's awful.   
  
Gee whiz.   
  
Terrible!

  
  
  
  
  
Sousuke is touching him, he can sense it. He sees it through his eyelashes. Sousuke traces his fingers, brushing over healing scrapes. He kisses his knuckles and says  _ sweetheart _ , and Rin knows what he means. He isn't sure that he is sleeping anymore. There are many problems in his life right now, aren't there? There is a lot that Rin isn't ready for. But he will have to face them anyway. But not now; he's still so tired. Tomorrow, he decides, and he seals himself up again.

  
  
_ Oh, you're a little backwards sweetheart - it's only November. _

Maybe nothing is as bad as he thought it was.

  
  


+

  
  
  
Rin doesn't get to see anyone he knows. He's pushed from this room to another. People he's never met before are talking to him, and Rin talks right back. He feels clearer than before but in a way that makes him feel unlike himself. He confesses. He talks about Australia. He talks about Sousuke and cherry pits and how he almost died but didn't really. He talks about his mother's boyfriend so many years ago, and about getting caught on fish hooks accidentally. I'm sad a lot, he says, but sometimes I'm not.

One lady says that it has been three days so that he can technically leave if he wants, since he's eighteen, but if he decides to try he might be sectioned. It happens sometimes.

Rin asks, what do you think I should do?

“You should stay.”

Okay, Rin says, and that night he sleeps for nearly eleven hours. He doesn't remember signing up to be part of a play but he's forgotten bigger things before. He whispers the lines into his pillow and he feels right side up.

  
  
  
  
×

  
  
Rin combs his hair before he showers, and he's still damp under is pajamas when he stands in the lobby and takes a call on a phone with a short metal cord. Sousuke's voice is a rich amber, a honey salve.

I miss you, Rin says. Sousuke doesn't think that he is dumb.

_ I miss you too, Rin. _

I feel much better now, Rin says. I hope I never feel the way I was feeling ever again.

And it's true! There is something over his face though, and it's fogging him up and making him slow. He still cries without thinking about it, even though the hall lights stay on and whoever walking them is probably writing this down. But comparatively it is much better and his heart is buzzing. He has an entire life ahead of him and he is just now realizing. He misses everyone. He wants to hug his mother. He wants to brush his sister’s hair. He wants to sit near Sousuke, very near him maybe, but he doesn't say that just yet. Rin is doing his best to be fair.

_ Good, _ Sousuke says, and he sounds relieved. Sousuke probably wants that, too, but Rin will take his time. They've never been in any kind of rush.

  
  
  
It could happen to you… and you, and… Yes, it could even happen to you!   
  
Well, it's not gonna happen to me.   
  
Me neither.   
  
Me neither.

  
Sousuke is flipping through the channels and Rin is resting his cheek on his chest. They are lazy, Rin muses. He's leaving soon for Australia but isn't going alone. Rin touches the old chalk line, wonders about the truth of it. Sousuke is keeping a tune in between the harsh notes of static. The heater is going and they are all bundled up. A story is a story and if you don't like it you can write another.

When we were children we were in a play about bugs at a picnic, and I was a grasshopper and you were a bumblebee, and we all stood in the same row and waited to say our lines or else we might get mixed up.

You can never prove if something is real or not.

“That's okay,” Sousuke says. “I'm a good guesser. I'll help you decide. And if you don't like that we'll make something up that's even better.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Refs to Leslie marmon silkos 'ceremony' which you should absolutely read if you haven't.


End file.
